New Same-Sex Marriage Poll and 2012 Iowa Amendment Predictions

A new poll by CBS News doesn't really show anything new - America is divided on same-sex marriage.

Here are the stats. Percentage of what kind of recognition people believe same-sex couples should have:

Legally Marry 33%
Form Civil Unions 27%
No Legal Recognition 35%

The poll finding further breaks these numbers down and compares it to polls conducted earlier. You can see the whole report embedded at the bottom of this post.

However, another recent report is more interesting - it attempts to predict how Iowans will vote for a state constitutional amendment defining marriage between one man and one woman, thus overturning the recent Iowa Supreme Court ruling which effectively legalized same-sex marriage.

Iowans won't have a chance to vote on such an amendment until 2012, but Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com has created a model to base his prediction on how that vote will turn out. He takes into factor three points: the year in which the amendment was voted on; the percentage of adults who, according to Gallup, say that religion is very important in their lives; and the number of white evangelicals in the state.

"So what does this mean for Iowa?" he asks. "The state has roughly average levels of religiosity, including a fair number of white evangelicals, and the model predicts that if Iowans voted on a marriage ban today, it would pass with 56.0 percent of the vote. By 2012, however, the model projects a toss-up: 50.4 percent of Iowans voting to approve the ban, and 49.6 percent opposed. In 2013 and all subsequent years, the model thinks the marriage ban would fail."

Of course no one can predict the future. Many factors can change. Plus, it'll have been nearly four years of performing same-sex marriages in Iowa. Familiarity creates acceptance. But all this is definitely food for thought. What's yours?

CBS News Same-Sex Marriage Poll 04-03-09

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